Thursday September 17, 2020
MOGADISHU (HOL) - The weeklong electoral talks between President Mohamed Farmaajo and Federal Member State leaders yielded fruit Thursday evening following an agreement to hold parliamentary elections from November this year based on a co-management deal.
According to a communique released Thursday evening, the leaders settled on about 14 points most of which mirror the agreements which brought forth the 2016/17 elections.
Standing out in the agreement is the co-management of the electoral process between the two levels of government.
The Federal Government, the communique reads, will appoint an electoral commission which will cooperate with electoral commissions at the Federal State levels to deliver the poll.
This would mean the current National Independent Electoral Commission will not run the elections but instead a temporary body, as earlier pushed for some of the FMS leaders will take charge.
This arrangement mirrors the 2016 model which saw temporary federal and state level electoral bodies conduct the exercise.
The leaders meeting in Mogadishu also shelved a proposal arrived at during the Dhusamareb III round reducing the number of delegates from 301 to 101.
The electoral process will kick off from November 2020, the communique notes but did not set specific timelines on when the elections will take place.
Senators will, just like in 2016 be elected by the FMS parliaments while both Senators and MPs representing clans in Somaliland will be done in Mogadishu.
The agreement will now be taken to the Federal Parliament for approval by both chambers unlike in the Dhusamareb Model which gave authority to the Lower House only.
Security of the elections will jointly be provided by the FGS and FMS, the leaders agreed.